New foot-and-mouth vaccine offers hope for developing world

A new, synthetic vaccine for the foot-and-mouth disease (FMD)
virus could help turn the tide in the global battle against the
disease.

Developed by a team of structural biologists, physicists and
chemists at the Diamond Light Source and the Pirbright Institute,
the new vaccine crucially isn't created using the live virus,
making manufacturing and administrating the vaccine potentially
much safer.

"The key breakthrough is that our vaccine is based on part of
the virus that doesn't include the viral genome," David Stuart,
Director of Life Sciences at the Diamond Light Source, told
Wired.co.uk. As a result there's no risk of a live-virus
outbreak.

Created by synthetically recreating the outer shell of the
foot-and-mouth virus, the new vaccine is said to have performed
just as effectively as current vaccines in early trials. Key
results are published in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens on 27
March.

By exactly mimicking the shape of the virus' shell, the
synthetic vaccine elicits the same immune response as the real
virus. This immune response is remembered and acts as protection
against future infection by the real virus. The team were also able
to tweak the vaccine on an atom-by-atom basis to improve its
stability. "Technical advances at Diamond and have made it much
easier and much quicker to get atomic detail on the complete virus
shell," said Stuart. "We've gone from a situation where it would be
a couple of week's work, to it now only taking a couple of
hours."

Creating a more stable vaccine should make it easier to
transport and store. This could be game-changing in parts of
Africa, the Middle East and India as it reduces the need for
refrigeration.

"The ability to produce a vaccine outside of
high containment and that does not require a cold storage
chain should greatly increase production capacity and reduce
costs," said Bryan Charleston, Head of Livestock Viral Diseases
Programme at the Pirbright Institute. "Globally there is
an undersupply of the vaccine due to the high cost of
production and this new development could solve this problem
and significantly control foot-and-mouth disease
worldwide."

The vaccine is yet to be commercialised and is unlikely to be on
the market for several years.

It is not yet known whether a synthetic vaccine would result in
changes to how outbreaks of foot-and-mouth are controlled. The World Organisation for Animal Health distinguishes between
countries that are free from FMD due to vaccination and those that
are simply free from FMD -- as a result vaccinating animals can
have an effect on a country's trade of livestock and meat. The
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs notes,
"regaining disease free status would take at least three months
longer if the decision was made to vaccinate in the event of a Foot
and Mouth outbreak, therefore increasing the time before the UK
could resume exporting."

"How a country like the UK responds is a matter for public
policy and politics," said David Stuart. "The issue is that it's
not possible and not accepted that you can reliably distinguish
between a vaccinated animal and an animal with a live virus.
Because our vaccine contains only a portion of the virus, it should
be possible to refine a test to distinguish between infected and
vaccinated animals."

The work is principally funded by the Department
for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Wellcome
Trust.